Our View: Flanagan is playing with fire

It's sometimes difficult to discern fact from fiction when it comes to the information coming from Mayor Will Flanagan and his administration. The latest case in point: the city's “surprise” deficit. The administration only this month revealed to the City Council that the city faced a $10 million deficit, necessitating the potential layoffs of firefighters Flanagan announced in February.

It’s sometimes difficult to discern fact from fiction when it comes to the information coming from Mayor Will Flanagan and his administration. The latest case in point: the city’s “surprise” deficit. The administration only this month revealed to the City Council that the city faced a $10 million deficit, necessitating the potential layoffs of firefighters Flanagan announced in February.

Come to find out the administration, way back in August, identified that projected budget gap to federal officials in justifying the need for additional funding in its 2013 SAFER grant application.

So what did the administration know and when did they know it? The story told in the SAFER grant application in August belies the rosy picture painted by the administration to the council and the public for nearly a year now. In June, former City Administrator Shawn Cadime and Treasurer John Nunes told the City Council that the city’s finances “had never been better,” City Council President Joseph Camara recalled Tuesday. In October, the administration reported to the council that the city’s bond rating had increased and it was solvent, recalled Councilor Michael Miozza, who requested the review of the 20013 grant application.

Just weeks ago, City Administrator Cathy Ann Viveiros told the council the administration only learned about the deficit in January. It’s understandable if Viveiros — who just started the job at the beginning of the year — did not have a handle on the cloudy fiscal situation. But what about Treasurer John Nunes? He told the council he did not recall being involved in the SAFER grant meetings.

Had the administration simply been honest with the City Council — and the city — about the situation, all sides could have devised a plan to address it instead of scrambling at the last minute to close a gaping budget gap. Instead, they kept this important information bottled up until it had reached a crisis point.

After receiving two of the largest SAFER grants in the country from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city is still requesting more than $3.2 million in federal funding to pay for the salaries of 16 firefighters. In that grant application, the administration committed to funding the firefighter positions paid for through a $14.4 million SAFER grant in 2011. But then Flanagan in February told the city a different story, announcing that he planned to lay off 30 percent of the city’s firefighters — 60 firefighters — unless the firefighters’ union agreed to concessions.

As Firefighters Union President Jason Burns asked at the City Council meeting Tuesday night, is Flanagan misrepresenting the facts to the city or is he misleading the federal government? Flanagan’s deception has jeopardized the city’s public safety and the city’s standing with the federal government.

Page 2 of 2 - The public trust has been broken by Flanagan so many times, in so many ways, it may be beyond repair. All of the fiscal shell games and political spin are only making matters worse. It’s time for the Flanagan administration to quit playing with fire.